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The permise behind the Atkins Diet is not reducing calorie intake, but rather restricting carb intake.
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it may not be the premise behind the diet, but independent studies have shown that people eating high protein diets in particular, actually eat fewer calories than those on high carb diets...
ergo atkins works because you eat FEWER calories.
Eating large quantities of protein is not good for you either - while protein can be converted to glucose and also to fat, the body has to deal with the nitrogen, which is toxic. the liver converts the excess nitrogen into urea, which is then excreted by the kidneys - if you leave urine lying around the urea will break down into ammonia , which has a very pungent smell (babies nappies often smell of it), and in the middle ages was used for dyeing.
Pushing lots of urea thru the kidneys can lead to kidney damage (cat's often suffer kidney problems due to their very high protein diets). Diabetes doesn't do good things to your kidneys, and it seems sensible to me to ensure that you don't go giving them a hard life by scoffing lots of protein as well.
the alternative is to eat a diet very high in fat, and before people start claiming that it was very close to an ancestral hunter gather diet - this is actually a myth, most hunter gatherers ate/eat diets high in carbs (actually proportions are not too dissimilar to modern dietary recommendations). I guess the only person who can claim an ancestral high fat diet is Bluesky with his inuit heritage - which may be why carb restriction has worked well in his case (apologies if I have made assumptions)
And I am still bemused by how anyone can think that pushing your body into producing ketones can be good for you. Isn't it in fact very bad for you?
our bodies are designed to burn glucose (it doesn't matter whether we get that from carbs, or it is created thru gluconeogenesis) - the glucose metabolic pathway is the most efficient way of utilising energy - the waste products are CO2 and water - burning fats does not yield anywhere near as much energy and it leaves a toxic byproduct behind (ketones), which can only be excreted relatively slowly (lungs/kidneys) - in a normal person ketones are only produced during starvation.
I still don't understand how adopting a diet that convinces your body that you are in fact starving is good for you?
(this what fuels the weight loss in uncontrolled diabetes - and I don't remember this as being a very healthy period of my life)
